Abstract

Damage detection in structural health monitoring (SHM) using piezoelectric transducers has received attention in recent decades for increasing safety and reducing maintenance costs of various types of engineering structures. Among the various methods to detect structural damage, the impedance-based method performs the measurement of the electrical impedance of piezoelectric transducers attached in the monitored structure, which is related to the mechanical properties of the structure due to the piezoelectric effect. Therefore, the impedance measurement is critical to ensure the correct diagnosis of the structure and this paper presents an analysis of the main techniques of signal acquisition from piezoelectric transducers that have been proposed in the literature to replace the conventional impedance analyzers. Experimental tests were carried out with a piezoelectric transducer attached to an aluminum bar and the acquisition techniques were analyzed and compared regarding the precision and sensitivity to damage. The analysis was performed using the real part of the impedance signatures and a basic damage index based on the correlation coefficient. The results indicate that the signal acquisition techniques have important differences regarding the precision and sensitivity to structural damage that should be considered in the development of impedance-based SHM systems.

Presentation

Author biographies

Danilo Ecidir Budoya was born in Bauru, Brazil, in 1989. He received a B.S. degree in electrical engineering in 2016 from São Paulo State University (UNESP), São Paulo, Brazil, where he is currently working toward a Master’s degree. He is currently a researcher with the Laboratory of Transducers and Data Acquisition, Department of Electrical Engineering, UNESP, where he works in the areas of structural health monitoring, signal processing, data acquisition and electronic instrumentation.

Fabricio Guimarães Baptista received B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from UNESP – Univ. Estadual Paulista, Ilha Solteira, Brazil, in 2006 and 2010, respectively.
From 2010 to 2011, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Intelligent Material Systems and Structures (CIMSS), Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, performing research in the field of structural health monitoring and piezoelectric transducers. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, UNESP, Bauru, where he coordinates the Laboratory of Transducers and Data Acquisition, working in the field of piezoelectricity, structural health monitoring, signal processing, data acquisition, and electronic instrumentation.